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Old Avalong Dairy barn, set to be torn down, holds memories for family

Susquehanna Bank plans to build a branch, demolishing a barn that once belonged to Avalong Dairy Farm in Springettsbury Township.

By LAUREN BOYER Daily Record/Sunday News

Updated:
03/04/2013 10:12:25 AM EST

The former Pfaltzgraff barn, part of the Meadowbrook Mansion complex that now houses Christmas Tree Hill, is going to be torn down to build a Susquehanna Bank. Some say it has historical significance. (YORK DAILY RECORD/SUNDAY NEWS--JASON PLOTKIN)

York, PA -

As a child, Sharon Tapp and her cousins would climb to the second floor of the barn where their grandparents -- Alva and Mary Long -- raised dairy cattle.

There, she untied bales of hay, formed piles and jumped into them.

It was there that her late uncle, Richard Long, would round the children into a cattle pen to watch him tend to his herd.

Soon, those glimpses of youth spent in that barn on Avalong Dairy Farm in Springettsbury Township might be all that are left of the old structure -- a onetime outlet store for Pfaltzgraff kitchenware.

On Thursday, the Springettsbury Township supervisors voted to approve a plan to build a new Susquehanna Bank on Whiteford Road where the vacant barn now stands.

Tapp learned of the plan two weeks ago. Since then, her calls to preservation groups and pleas to stop the demolition have been to no avail.

"It's really part of our heritage -- the rural heritage of York County," Tapp said. "It reminds us of who we are and where we came from."

Springettsbury officials had no legal recourse to protect the building, said township manager John Holman.

It's not on the township's list of "significant properties" compiled 15 years ago.

That list, however, includes the nearby Meadowbrook Mansion -- part of the Avalong farm now occupied by Christmas Tree Hill.

"It's not really still in an original state," said Stephen Trapnell, spokesman for Lancaster County-based Susquehanna Bank, said about the barn. "Based on the research we did, we weren't able to determine any particular historical significance."

The barn was one of two on the original farm that the Long family owned.

The other, she said, was destroyed in a fire in the 1980s.

Tapp, her husband and son were among the last Long family members to live in the mansion.

"When my son was little, every day we would walk down to the barns," she said. "We would visit the cows, visit the bulls."

After Mary Long died, the property was sold piecemeal to developers, Tapp said.

In the 1980s, the barn and surrounding property ended up in the hands of developer Bert Holleran, who partnered up with Susquehanna Pfaltzgraff and contractor Charlie Dietz to construct Meadowbrook Village, said Jack Kay, president of Susquehanna Real Estate.

Pfaltzgraff, he said, renovated the two-story barn and moved its former outlet at Village Green Shopping Center on East Market Street to the site.

It served as an anchor for the Meadowbrook Village shopping center until 2008, after Lifetime Brands purchased Pfaltzgraff's pottery division.

"In a way it's a shame that the history and our personal involvement in that development is going to be torn down," Kay said. "Things move on. That was then, and this is now, and the market kind of dictates what is the best use."

An exact timeframe for the demolition was unavailable Friday, Trapnell said, adding that a Susquehanna Bank project manager met with a local history group to determine the barn was constructed in the 1950s and renovated numerous times.

The community bank tries to save historic structures when possible, he added.

For example, an early 1900s paper mill in Lititz houses the bank's headquarters.

"We look at and have respect for historical properties," he said. "When it's possible, we have tried to adapt in the past."

But it's just not possible to make the barn a bank, he said.

"This is an area filled with other retail stores," Trapnell said. "Using that property as a bank branch is a productive use consistent with other retail stores that are there. It takes what is a vacant property and turns it into a building that can provide a use for the surrounding community."

AT A GLANCE

The project: Susquehanna Bank plans to demolish a barn that once belonged to the Avalong Dairy Farm in Springettsbury Township and build a 3,800-square-foot branch. The Springettsbury Township Board approved the project Thursday.

The barn: The barn was part of a farm owned by Alva and Mary Long. In the 1980s, a developer purchased the barn and surrounding land to create the Meadowbrook Village retail center. A Pfaltzgraff outlet was in the barn until 2008, after Lifetime Brands purchased the company's pottery division and closed its retail stores.